6 innovative and inexpensive Twitter campaigns to emulate

And while Instagram, Facebook and Google+ have incorporated hashtags with different levels of success, for most people hashtags are synonymous with
Twitter. While hashtags are the most popular example, a lot of businesses do other creative things on Twitter to engage their customers.

Before hashtags were prevalent, it was unheard of to display a hashtag on the screen during a television program. To promote the "Roast of Donald Trump,"
Comedy Central displayed the hashtag "#trumproast" on-screen. This resulted in 25,000 tweets during the initial transmission and drove Comedy Central's
television viewership higher than it had ever been for that time slot.

Twitter hashtags allow people to find a community with a shared experience, which in turn sparks additional interest in the event. Hashtag use like this is
scalable so long as participants use Twitter and the event hashtag is prominently displayed.

2. The Minnesota State Patrol's #IWantThatHat

Often, trending hashtags will be comical phrases users will creatively riff off. For example, as I write this, #HowToAskAGirlToHomecoming is trending. The
Twitterverse is populated with tweets like this:

With this context,
the Minnesota State Patrol initiated a social media recruitment campaign
around the hashtag "#IWantThatHat." The results were great. From the interest the campaign produced through frequently scheduled tweets that brandished the
nontraditional hashtag, the Minnesota State Patrol got a much more diverse population of applicants, which was one of the campaign's goals.

It's unlikely that a traditional hashtag would have produced the same level of interest or enthusiasm.

AirBNB
came to prominence as a business that helps travelers rent rooms, apartments or houses from people in destination cities. It's a brilliant and
well-executed idea. But when AirBNB started to offer sublets, which was very different from its core offering, it had to get the word out. It did so with
promoted tweets.

Promoted tweets are paid, targeted tweets that appear in people's Twitter streams. If you're curious about why AirBNB would have to pay for tweets, think
back to the last conversation you had about sublets, and you may answer your own question.

ESPN
has a rich online offering. On each Web page, ESPN has a conspicuous social-sharing bar and an additional tweet button in the media player (nearly every
page has a video associated with it).

In one month, these buttons generate 4,000 tweets. This isn't overwhelming until you realize that each tweet draws 15 new readers to ESPN's site, which
means these buttons bring in 60,000 additional readers for ESPN every month.

Javascript buttons like this are easy to implement for any business. In fact, Twitter gives them to you here. Note how easy it is customize the
message, links and attribution.

5. Bonobos's exclusive Twitter sale

What is the one thing customers want from businesses on social media? Discounts.

At the time of the sale, Bonobos had many fewer followers than the 40,000 they have now, and Bonobos products are not inexpensive. Many businesses should
able to repeat tactics like this for a low cost.

6. Zappos's customer service

Shoe retailer Zappos is a customer-centric company. It allows free returns on all shoes, and
is known for its committed employees and stellar customer service. A portion of that customer service takes place on Twitter.

If discounts are the No. 1 thing customers want from businesses on social media, guess what they want next?

Customer service.

Zappos not only engages 40-85 customers daily on Twitter, but it embeds customer tweets about its shoes on the TweetWall. Not only can customers resolve their customer service issues
on Twitter, but Zappos elevates customer engagement and promotion by giving customer tweets some distinction.

Bonus: Customers can use these tactics, too.

While many of these tactics may seem inexpensive (they are), it's worth noting that your customers can use the same tools.

Recently, a British Airways passenger, frustrated that British Airways lost his luggage and gave him the runaround, tweeted: "Don't fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous."

Not content to simply tweet the message, the passenger paid $1,000 to promote the tweet. The promoted tweet resulted in more than 73,000 additional
impressions and multiple media appearances for the disgruntled passenger.

There are plenty of easy ways to further integrate Twitter into your marketing mix. I hope this gives you a sense of what businesses do and what you can
do.